Real Goblin

I’ve don’t know that I’ve ever hated a book more…

The Unprecedented Times

Review Score:

D

May 31 / 2023

Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an exercise in how long you can read on before throwing your hands up in defeat of the completely miserable, unforgivably foul protagonist. This book has been called Catcher in the Rye for the modern era. But I feel so strongly in opposition to that. I adore Catcher in the Rye and often consider it one of my favorite books. The narrator in Diary of an Oxygen Thief is no Holden Caulfield. Holden is young, lost, disillusioned, but you understand him to a degree. You gradually learn about his character in a natural way, even pitying him by the end. That is not true of the Oxygen Thief, who is at every point older than Holden is. That should make him wiser, more sympathetic. But it doesn’t. He’ll blame the alcoholism or his upbringing, but in such a throwaway, nonchalant, self aggrandizing way that he does not win the sympathy like J.D. Salinger’s famed protagonist. 

The book’s first half is deceptive. The opening details the narrator’s bad treatment of the people around him, women primarily. In fact, almost exclusively. His male relationships are sparsely mentioned at all. The narrator will describe a particularly cruel encounter. He doesn’t abuse in a direct way, making a point to say that he never struck a woman. But he manipulates to his heart’s content. The first line has you prepared to read the guilty conscience of a man who enjoyed hurting women, emotionally torturing them out boredom. You’re led to believe that he’ll be redeemed by the end. But he isn’t.

Irredeemable characters are nothing new. One Reddit user calls the unnamed narrator “Dennis Reynolds, Don Draper, and Holden Caulfield all mixed together”. But those characters don’t exactly line up. Dennis Reynolds is played for comedy. His horrid nature is comedic, it isn’t meant to garner sympathy. And Don Draper and characters like him (Bojack Horseman also comes to mind) are only meant to be sympathetic to a degree. The people around them are effected by their decisions and see the consequences of their actions. On television, that’s easy to see. But in a book with a sole narrator, we never see that aspect. The main character even leaves his home country, in essence avoiding all consequence.

The ending is dull, uninteresting, and masturbatory. This is truly the biggest crime of all. The author plays it up as if he’s the biggest victim of the story. Like he finally got a taste of his own medicine and maybe by the end, you’ll appreciate the cruel irony of the situation. But he actually just gets a little bit embarrassed. Oops. Uh oh. What ever will we do? If this is the climax of your story, just post it on Tumblr next time.

I have to wonder if this is the point of it all. Maybe this is the type of review the writer was trying to get out of people when they wrote it. If so, I’m sorry to be playing into their hands. The book is written anonymously and in the first person, which would indicate that the story is true. I can’t say for sure if it is or isn’t. I think that’s the idea. Maybe the author knew the type of response it would get and decided to dodge criticism or targeted hate by not attaching their name to it. But this book isn’t worth your time. I’d sooner throw myself into a ball pit full of used needles than read this dreck again. Perhaps it’s all a joke on the reader. It’s a story about a protagonist who takes pleasure in drawing people into false relationships just for them to get attached so he can derive some pleasure from the pain of him leaving them without notice. He wastes their time. Maybe the reader is just another of these relationships. The difference is that the author fails to make you care in the first place.